Secrets
by SasukeCorvin
Summary: A short story based on a passage from I For Isobel. About a child that tyres to tell their brother about their secret place.


I took the pieces of bread and crept out. With unusual forethought I avoided the dogs and chooks, so then there wouldn't be trouble about then following me. Then I went to my hidey hole, the big old tree over the dam. The tree had fallen over on to the dam. The tree wasn't for playing on, it was covered in slippery moss and small bugs that climbed on my legs and the branches creaked in the wind, but I could balance my way across a branch on to a bolder surrounded by reeds where I could sit and be out of sight of all but the ducks of the dam.

I told Sam about it once, "Can I tell you a secret? You're not to tell anyone else."

Sam tried to act like he didn't care but I could see his straiten and lean towards me, "sure."

"come with me" I whispered conspiratorially, glancing quickly around to ensure no one had observed our exchange, before leading him quickly around the side of the house, along the back until I was levelled with the lowered are in the fence, where I stopped, crouching under the window, waiting for Sam to join me. "Over there", I indicated with my hands. "If anyone comes just say we're getting the footy I dropped".

We slipped through the fence, half hoped, half walked across the bogy paddock, Sam struggling to keep up with me, his thongs useless in preventing him from slipping in the mud. We reached the dam with only mild incident, I scurried up on to the fallen tree then turned and offered Sam help. He looked up, eyes wide and a frown on his face, and climbed in with a scoff, without my help. Standing side by side in the middle of the tree I released a relived sigh. Sam looked around at our surroundings then turned to me. "So what's your secret?" I felt the happiness slip from me as confusion then sadness took its place.

"Right there." I indicated to the hidden bolder with my hands.

"This isn't a secret." Sam was disappointed and resentful that I had dragged him across the muddy field for no reason. "Everyone knows about the tree. It's just a muddy old tree that fell in to the dam."

"But it's my secret pl…" I trailed off, realising Sam didn't see the wonder and never would. People like Sam would never see it because they didn't need a magical place to have fun; the whole world was entertaining place for people like him with their sports, and their friends and their small minds and imaginations.

"Places aren't secret," he declared knowledgably, "Somebody always knows." Then he awkwardly climbed down the tree and started marching back across the paddock, "I'm going to see if Baden is here."

It's better that Sam wasn't interested, I think to myself, this way the magic is all my own. I carefully walk across the branch to the bolder, and flop down on it, I rip the bread in to pieces and feed it to the ducks of the dam, persuading the ducks to come closer so I could pat them. I reach in to a small hollow in the branch I walked across, and pulled out my tressures; a plastic crystal I got from my cousin, a straw hat that was once my grandpas, a few stones I had found on the edge of the dam, a drawing book that my grandma gave me, a toy cat that Jai said I could have, and the most important of all an egg that one of the ducks had laid in the hollow before I found it, it was a soft grey with specks of deep blue sprinkled across it. I carefully pull the egg from the hollow and held it up to the sky, imagining that the specks of blue in the egg are the same blue of the sky, pretending that is was on a cloud in the sky with the egg of a beautiful sky bird and that I was a princess of the sky waiting for my sky bird to hatch and take me away across the sky. Safely nestled on the rock with the sky reflecting on the water around me, I imagined a place without any worries where I could feed the ducks as much as I want. Taking a bite of the reaming bread careful not to get any of the crumbs on myself, lest my mother knottiest, and scolding me for ruining my appetite. As I chewed on the tasty grain of the bread I softly run my fingers over the duck egg letting my mind wonder to magical worlds in the sky. Sam, pets and worries all vanish.

I stayed their dreaming of my wonderful world, long after the bread was gone, through the sunny afternoon, until shadows fell over my face, persuading me back in to this world and the ducks wish to return to their nest and the hunger calling me home for dinner.


End file.
